A prisoner-of-war museum on the horizon for 2028 near Sainte-Mère-Eglise
Article published on France Bleu on 20/05/2025. A museum dedicated to prisoners of war is to be built a stone’s throw from Foucarville. This small village housed over 100,000 German prisoners from June 1944 to 1946-1947. The camp was run by an American lieutenant-colonel, Warren J. Kennedy. It’s a little-known story in the Cotentin region. […]
Five bread ovens for 60,000 men
CCPWE 19 covered more than 100 hectares between Foucarville and Ravenoville. From 15,000 at the end of November 1944, the prisoners reached 60,000 less than six months later. After several days’ train travel, most of them arrived exhausted, hungry and dehydrated in successive waves of up to 10,000 men. 60,000 prisoners in a small village […]
“We always talk about the victors, never about the vanquished”: a museum on German prisoners during the Second World War is planned
Article published on the France 3 Région and France Info websites – 08/05/2025. May 8, 1945 marked the end of the Second World War, but not yet the return home of the 3.8 million German prisoners, some of whom had been captured since June 1944. At the Foucarville camp in Manche, which housed up to […]
VIDEO. In La Manche, a museum dedicated to Europe’s largest prison camp
Article published on the Ouest-France website – 05/05/2025. The German prison camp at Foucarville (Manche) was the largest of its kind built in Europe. Between 1944 and 1947, over 100,000 men were held captive in this camp, of which not a single visible vestige remains. By 2028, a museum is due to be built to […]
Ravenoville (50) Museum
Article published in Le Moniteur – 18/04/2025. Totally unknown, Foucarville was the largest German prison camp in Europe – 100,000 men on 80 hectares – opened in 1944,at the Liberation. The museum that will be dedicated to it is a response to the development of remembrance tourism that the region is calling for. The project. […]
3 questions to …. Jérémy Griffon, architect, TRACKS agency
Jérémy Griffon, architect, TRACKS agency In 2024, the TRACKS agency decided to respond to a call for tenders to create a museum on the subject of war captivity. A behind-the-scenes look at the work of the winning team. What were your motivations? How did you work on this project? Did the preparation involve any particular […]
Geneva, 1929: the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
In the German soldier’s kit, as on the millions of leaflets dropped by the Americans behind enemy lines after the landings on June 6, 1944, the Geneva Convention of 1929 is displayed like an open sesame. During the Second World War, this legal text was brandished as a guarantee that prisoners of war would be […]
3 questions to F. Théofilakis, Chairman of the Scientific Committee
Historian, Senior Lecturer – Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Chairman of the Scientific Committee You chair the scientific committee of the future museum. The main document collection is the Kennedy collection, donated by the daughter of Colonel Kennedy, the camp commander. How did you go about finding other documentary collections? Creating a museum about wartime captivity […]
Clap 001! Competition
In April 2024, the Warren J. Kennedy Association, owner of the future museum, launched a design competition. The jury, which met on June 18, selected three teams from 49 applications. They were invited to submit an architectural project in the form of a sketch, and a scenographic project illustrated by a one-minute film showing the […]
Clap 002 – Preliminary design (APS)
Every architectural project unfolds in a succession of well-defined phases, each with its own contribution to make. After the sketch, the Avant-Projet Sommaire (APS) appears on March 12, 2025…In our case, the APS is an architectural, landscape and scenographic study whose aim is to verify “the realism, feasibility and approximate cost of the project”.Architecturally, the […]
